It is often desirable to share information in an electronic form with others in order to better communicate an idea. Bluetooth communication has been developed as an industry standard to enable many devices, typically, though not necessarily, portable devices, to communicate wirelessly over short distances at relatively low power levels.
Bluetooth's great strength as an open, interoperable standard is also a challenge. For example, if a Bluetooth-enabled device accepts incoming connection requests, its user may end up receiving many connection requests from other Bluetooth users. Responding to these requests, most of which responses will typically be to reject the connection, is a time consuming annoyance. Yet the option of not accepting incoming connection requests may automatically reject those few that are actually desired.
In addition to the nuisance factor, responding to connection requests consumes valuable energy, which is a precious resource for portable electronics. Not only does it take power to operate the Bluetooth radio and transmit rejection messages, but turning on a display and interacting with a user is typically an even greater energy burden.
Further, there are many security concerns with Bluetooth. Because it is an open standard, designed for interoperability, it is possible for essentially all Bluetooth-enabled devices to communicate with other Bluetooth devices. Hence, it is quite possible for one device to pretend that it is actually another, which is known in the security arts as a spoofing attack. While this may be detected at the lower levels of the Bluetooth protocol, such a spoof might not be obvious to a user making an accept/reject decision about an incoming connection request. And a spoofed connection may introduce virus software or steal valuable information.
Importantly, the process of one Bluetooth-enabled device finding another Bluetooth device to communicate with, known as “Bluetooth Discovery,” is a time consuming, power hungry process. During discovery, a Bluetooth transceiver may send inquiry messages on a periodic basis in an attempt to find another Bluetooth-enabled device. Likewise, Bluetooth transceivers wishing to be “discovered” must periodically turn on and listen for such inquiry messages.
Because of potential differences in the periodic schedules of different Bluetooth devices and possible radio interference, it may takes many tens of seconds to successfully transmit and receive an inquiry message after two devices come within communication range. Once an inquiry message is received, the receiving device will typically send an inquiry response packet (message) containing, among other things, its Bluetooth Device Address. This subsequent exchange may take several seconds per device.
Consequently, developing a list of potential Bluetooth communication “partners” via the Bluetooth Discovery process may require upwards of half a minute, all the while consuming relatively high levels of power for RF transceivers and protocol processing. This is generally seen as an excessive burden to impose on the human users of Bluetooth-enabled devices, such as mobile phones and hand held computers.